Just because you live in a city or in a home without a yard doesn't mean that you can't want to garden, or even have a garden. While many city dwellers rent space in community gardens to grow fruits and vegetables, others turn to their own windowsills to grow their greenery. In New York City, for example, residents are turning to hydroponic gardening, which is an urban gardening trend that some call window farming.
In window farming, you place plants on vertical columns in a window. These vertical columns have a nutrient-spiked water pumped from a common reservoir going top to bottom. Generally, you connect plastic bottles in a line to support the plant roots. With the help of pipes and timer controlled pump, nutrients trickle down from one plant to another from top of the window, circulating throughout the system. Unused nutrients and water are collected and re-pumped making window farming an economical method of decorating your windows.
Hydroponic plants use the window space efficiently as they have comparatively denser roots than soil plants. This compact root structure can be contained in the hanging bottles that are centers of attraction in urban window farms. Europeans have been urban gardening for years, and have successfully grown tomatoes, sweet peppers, and strawberries via hydroponics.
If you're interested in learning more about hydroponics or other urban gardening ideas, reach out to the local cooperative extension office at your state university that covers agriculture. For example, in Pennsylvania where I live, that would be Penn State University. These offices have free master gardener classes that cover a variety of gardening topics, including hydroponics and how to start your own window garden.
Here's another way to garden with limited space—container gardening!
